Pragmatism, non-consensual democracy and populism
Pragmatism, non-consensual democracy and populism
StatusVoR
Alternative title
Authors
Koczanowicz, Leszek
Monograph
Monograph (alternative title)
Date
2026-10-10
Publisher
Journal title
Pragmatism Today
Issue
1
Volume
17
Pages
Pages
41-47
DOI
ISSN
ISSN of series
Access date
2026-10-10
Abstract PL
Abstract EN
In this paper, I offer a reinterpretation of populism as viewed through the lens of political pragmatism and my pragmatist concept of non-consensual democracy. My argument takes its starting point from a critique of the currently dominant approach in which populism is primarily described as a threat to liberal-democratic institutions. While such an assessment of populism is legitimate, it is also incomplete since it fails to explain why populist mobilizations prove to be convincing to the public. I argue that populism should also be regarded as an expression of real deficits of liberal democracy, including an enfeeblement of representation, a yawning gap between institutional politics and everyday experience, a crisis of representation, and the reduction of conflict to a technocratically managed consensus. In the first part, I build on John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, and also Mikhail Bakhtin to outline the pragmatist understanding of politics as rooted in practices of everyday life. In the second part, I discuss my idea of non-consensual democracy, which proposes an alternative to both the deliberative model of consensus and the agonistic affirmation of conflict. In the third part, I draw a distinction between the common good and common interests to show that pragmatism furnishes us with a language capable of capturing democratic integration without recourse to the notion of community. This promotes construing populism as both a symptom and a challenge because while it reveals actual failings of liberal democracy, it responds to them in an anti-pluralist manner. Thus, the democratic response must not come down to a condemnation of populism; instead, democratic institutions must be restructured to accommodate permanent disagreement,
conflicts of interest, and non-consensual dialogue.
Abstract other
Keywords PL
Keywords EN
common good
common interests
liberal democracy
non-consensual democracy
pluralism
pop- ulism
pragmatism
common interests
liberal democracy
non-consensual democracy
pluralism
pop- ulism
pragmatism
Keywords other
Sustainable Development Goals
Exhibition title
Place of exhibition (institution)
Exhibition curator
Type
License type
Funder
Time range from
Time range to
Contact person name
Related publication
Related publication
Grant/project name
Estetyka populizmu: Walka polityczna i doświadczenie estetyczne w Polsce po 1989 roku (
Grant number
2019/35/B/HS2/01187)
Collections
Views
0Acquisition Date20.10.2022
Downloads
0Acquisition Date20.10.2022
Google Scholar
